Exposing CIA/MI6 'Justice' Operations in Syria

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In the immediate wake of the Syrian government’s abrupt collapse, much remains uncertain about the country’s future. While longtime leader Bashar Assad has sought refuge in Moscow, most of his government and its military, security, and intelligence apparatus remains in Damascus. Calls for reconciliation between officials and the predominantly foreign “opposition” abound, but the prospect of show trials for state apparatchiks is high. After all, elements of Anglo-American intelligence have been planning for such an eventuality since before the Syrian civil war even started.

In May 2011, the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA) was birthed by shadowy NATO state contractors, ARK and Tsamota. Its first act was to train handpicked Syrian “investigators, lawyers, and activists in basic international criminal and humanitarian law…enabling [them] to link state and non-state actors to underlying criminal acts.” Dedicated “teams of investigators according to their regions” - including Aleppo, Hama, Homs, and Idlib - were created, “and equipped with field investigative kits.”

Their objective was to gather evidence of war crimes committed by Syrian government forces, in support of a “domestic justice process in a future transitional Syria.” We must ask ourselves how such a project came to be before the Syrian army was formally deployed by Damascus, in response to the foreign-fomented crisis that commenced in mid-March that year. Particularly given bringing officials to trial in a “future transitional Syria” was wholly contingent on all-out regime change.

The timing of CIJA’s launch is a palpable indication foreign actors were laying foundations for that eventuality from the very first days of Syria’s “peaceful revolution”, before full-blown civil war had erupted. Given the affiliations of ARK and Tsamota, the pair were well-placed to know in advance of plans by Western governments to topple the Assad government via brute force. Now that has come to pass, it may be time for their long-standing plan to at last be put into action.

‘Regime Change’

Founded by MI6 journeyman Alistair Harris, ARK was one of a constellation of contractors, staffed by military and intelligence veterans, employed by British intelligence at a cost of many millions to conduct covert psychological warfare campaigns in Syria, from the initial days of the crisis. The aim was to destabilise Assad’s government, convince the domestic population, international bodies and Western citizens that genocidal CIA and MI6-backed militant groups pillaging the country were a “moderate” alternative, and deluge media the world over with pro-opposition propaganda.

Under this operation’s auspices, ARK founded and ran numerous ostensibly independent opposition media outlets targeting Syrians of all ages, while tutoring and equipping countless local “citizen journalists”, teaching them “camera handling, lighting, sound, interviewing, filming a story…video and sound editing…voice-over, scriptwriting,” and “graphics and 2D and 3D animation design.” The firm’s students were also instructed in practical propaganda theory, such as “target audience identification, media narrative analysis and monitoring, behavioral identification/understanding, campaign planning, behavioral change, and how communications can influence it.”

Such was ARK’s intimate proximity with anti-Assad elements, it boasted in leaked submissions to the Foreign Office of being entrusted by Western governments to develop a dedicated Office for Syrian Opposition Support. This entity identified the most promising groups for the proxy war’s sponsors to finance, in turn “[helping] present them to international donors, and provide access to networks that could deliver assistance.” These efforts intensified “as the conflict deepened and it became apparent that regime change would not occur in the short term.”

Tsamota’s primitive official website describes the company as “a security and justice sector consultancy which provides rule of law, forensics and natural resources advisory services,” working in “in politically, legally, socially and logistically challenging environments” for Western governments. The firm is not a compelling candidate for holding government officials anywhere accountable for war crimes. Tsamota has since inception offered guidance to major corporations on how to maximise profits in the Global South, while limiting their local and international legal liabilities.

In 2013, Tsamota director William Wiley gave a scandalous presentation to Canadian consortium MineAfrica Inc. In it, he set out a series of hypothetical scenarios in which foreign mining companies operating in countries such as the Congo and Mali employed private security firms to crack down on striking workers, or deal with “local militias” interfering with their operations. Wiley outlined a number of means by which these firms could be insulated from legal repercussions for heavy-handed responses to such incidents, up to and including murder.

The presentation described Tsamota as composed of “experts” drawn from “national police, military and intelligence forces.” Wiley is no exception, having served in the Canadian military for almost two decades. Subsequently, he turned to international law, among other things overseeing the trial of Saddam Hussein October 2005 - December 2006, for crimes against humanity. Mainstream accounts acknowledge Wiley was imposed on the former Iraqi leader’s defence team without consent - a major breach of basic legal norms - by the US embassy in Baghdad’s Regime Crimes Liaison Office.

After capture, Hussein was initially interrogated by the CIA. Contemporary media reports noted there was significant concern within the Agency that “their questioning could become public during his eventual trial,” raising issues around “how to conduct the questioning and record the conversations.” The reasons why were unstated, although a likely explanation was Washington wished to avoid awkward disclosures in court about Hussein’s long-running relationship with the CIA, and active US complicity in many of the most heinous crimes of which he was accused.

To say the least, this was a sensitive role indeed. Even prominent local supporters of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq charged that Baghdad’s “interim” puppet government was seeking “show trials followed by speedy executions” of Hussein et al to boost its credibility. Wiley being entrusted with this mission speaks volumes about his reliability from the US government’s perspective. It also raises obvious questions about the nature of his relationship with the CIA, and whether that bond influenced CIJA’s creation half a decade later.

‘Moving Documents’

A series of leaked ARK files on CIJA’s activities authored in the years immediately following its creation make grand claims about its achievements. One declares the Commission “innovated in the field of transitional justice…aiding the collection of evidence to document war crimes, crimes against humanity, and other violations of International Humanitarian Law” in Syria. Another states its work represented “a landmark development in international justice: the contemporaneous gathering of evidence of violations of international humanitarian law conducted by regime forces”:

“[CIJA], through expert training, effective equipment provision and a commitment to the truth were able to ensure that when the conflict ends, the raw material of a post-conflict war crimes process is ready for trial, in turn providing a key contribution to truth telling, reconciliation and the future of Syria.”

Elsewhere, ARK boasted how CIJA had seized thousands of kilograms of “contemporaneous documentation”, hundreds of thousands of pages of “evidential material” and thousands of videos from Syria, “all of which had to be hand carried” out of the country. Cut to February 2021, and Commission chair Stephen Rapp, a US diplomatic warhorse, bragged to CBS about the sheer volume of evidence CIJA collected. He claimed the papertrail exposed a systematic strategy of Assad government-directed executions of opposition activists, along with ensuing state-sanctioned coverups:

“Now we have 800,000 pages of original documents, signed and sealed with original signatures going all the way up to Assad that document this whole strategy…We see reports back about ‘well, we’ve got a real problem here, there are too many corpses stacking up, somebody’s gonna have to help us with that’...Everything is handled in this sort of totalitarian system where they frankly think they can get away with things...they were almost stupid…they created evidence.”

If such damning, incontrovertible proof was bagged at any stage by CIJA, it has never emerged publicly. Still, throughout the Syrian dirty war, the Commission enjoyed glowing profiles in Western media, while providing journalists and rights groups with multiple scoops supposedly exposing Syrian government atrocities. At no point did any mainstream reporter or NGO question, let alone raise concerns about, the manner in which the Commission garnered the material upon which its cases against government officials in Damascus was “hand carried” out of the country.

CIJA chief Wiley acknowledged in 2014 his organisation smuggled evidence from Syria by working with every opposition group “up to but excluding Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State.” However, a 2019 investigation by The Grayzone amply indicates that CIJA was frequently in extremely close quarters with both groups. Moreover, they were paid handsomely for their assistance in securing documentation. This included material seized in Raqqa after its January 2014 capture by ISIS, right when the ultra-extremist group was massacring Alawites and Christians.

In a 2016 New Yorker profile of CIJA, Wiley detailed the practical hassles and financial drain inherent in “moving documents [over] international borders” and opposition-controlled “checkpoints”, while relying on “rebel groups and couriers for logistical support.” He described how bundles of Syrian government files “typically” arrived at the Commission’s offices “in a dizzying array of crappy suitcases.” Wiley lamented, “we burn enormous sums of money moving this stuff.”

Accordingly, CIJA received tens of millions of dollars for its efforts from a variety of Western governments, including those at the forefront of the Syrian dirty war. Despite the vast windfall though, the Commission’s work produced zero prosecutions for many years. This changed in late 2019, when Anwar Raslan and Eyad Gharib, two former members of Damascus’ General Intelligence Directorate, were indicted in Germany for crimes against humanity.

‘Many Contradictions’

Raslan headed the Directorate’s domestic security unit, while Gharib was one of his departmental subordinates. The pair defected to the opposition in December 2012. Raslan and his family fled to Jordan, where he played “an active and visible role in the Syrian opposition.” He was part of the anti-Assad delegation at the Geneva II conference on Syria in January 2014, and in July that year, was granted asylum in Germany.

After his escape from Syria, Raslan told numerous lurid tales of abuse and atrocities perpetrated by his unit, and the Assad government more widely, during his 20 years of state service. He claimed his defection was spurred after learning an apparent opposition attack in Damascus he was charged with investigating was, in fact, staged by security forces. Significant doubts about his accounts, and whether his defection was principled or just cynical opportunism, have been raised in many quarters.

Artist’s rendition of Raslan’s trial

In a perverse irony, Raslan’s loudmouth propensity was his undoing. His assorted claims post-defection provided grounds for arrest by German authorities, and were used against him and Gharib in their prosecutions. These legal actions heavily relied on documents seized by CIJA, including Central Crisis Management Cell records. This unit was created in March 2011 by Damascus, to manage responses to mass rioting that erupted this month. These documents have been widely described as the “linchpin” of the Commission’s case against “the Syrian regime.”

Yet, as this journalist has previously exposed, the Central Crisis Management Cell files in fact show the Assad government explicitly and repeatedly instructed security forces to protect protesters, prevent violence, and keep the situation under control. The documents also detail how from inception, many “peaceful” revolutionaries were armed and extremely violent, while opposition elements systematically murdered security service operatives, pro-government figures, and demonstrators to foment catastrophe, in a manner eerily similar to many CIA/MI6 regime change operations old and new.

In February 2021, Gharib was found guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity. He received four-and-a-half years in prison. A year later, Raslan was given life for crimes including mass torture, rape, and murder. The pair were not convicted for personally perpetrating these horrors, but serving in the General Intelligence Directorate at the time they were allegedly committed. “Expert” witness evidence provided at their trials left much to be desired.

For example, judges and prosecutors alike expressed disquiet at “many contradictions” in the testimony of “P3”, a Syrian government operative who purportedly worked in a security service “mail department”, and was central to Gharib’s conviction. P3 professed to seeing sensitive documents “related to the transfer of corpses” of opposition activists “to burial sites.” They “provided contradictory information” in statements to German police and the court, and were “visibly nervous” while testifying. Throughout, their seemingly aghast attorney sat nearby “putting his hands behind his head.”

Meanwhile, during Raslan’s prosecution, “P4” - a nameless individual who claimed to have been detained in a Syrian prison, and bribed his way out - testified he saw 500,000 corpses buried via a “bulldozer and a truck” next to his house, in an area which was previously “a desert”. Reports of the trial indicate there “was a feeling” among those present in court, including “the public”, that these numbers were greatly “exaggerated.”

The sense that Gharib and Raslan were prosecuted because they were within easy reach, and CIJA needed something to show for all its well-remunerated efforts, is ineluctable. The Commission had strong grounds to be anxious about failing to fulfill its founding objective. In March 2020, the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) formally accused the organisation of “submission of false documents, irregular invoicing, and profiteering” relating to an EU “Rule of Law” project it ran in Syria.

Fast forward to today, and The Guardian reports that “the abrupt implosion of the infrastructure of state terror” in Syria “has made available a huge volume of evidence.” The outlet quoted CIJA chief William Wiley at some length. He compared Assad’s fall to “a situation much like Germany in 1945 or Iraq in 2003,” with “a sudden availability of all state records” making prosecution of state officials a fait accompli:

“It’s a very unusual situation, and its suddenness creates challenges and opportunities in simply dealing with the material…If there’s any security intelligence guy that rocks up in Europe, there’s typically going to be enough material already to hand.”